After dessert and coffee, they sat in the living room where Claude had fires blazing, lamps and candles lit. Lena's angora, curled on a floor cushion, was fast asleep. Orville stroked him and he rolled over and yawned and stretched: upstairs a door slammed. The mantel clock chimed delicately: rain was making slow sounds.
Orville sat close to Jeannette on the sofa and the warmth of her body, the warmth of her hands and the fires made him shut his eyes: nothing was wrong; then she asked her disturbing question, that old question, as though in great pain.
"Why do we have to die?"
She was remembering remembrances of London and Wisconsin, remembering her father who had often said that death was not enough.
"... Hardly a question ... doesn't it evolve out of the medieval ages, Jean? I guess they were asking that during the Crusades. During the Inquisition. Sir Walter must have asked it. Joan. Maybe Christ?
"An important question ... but for some of us there's an answer: we die to escape hell. I've been wanting to escape it. Our inquisition ... can't we call it that? ... it's not something we cherish ... death is a way out. You know that..."
"I shouldn't have asked ... I know better ... sometimes it seems there ought to be a way to live without tragedy ... I want to make life worthwhile for you, Orv. Back home. Together. I want it to be like that."
He smiled a smile of thanks and love.
"I still think about Rousseau because I was brought up thinking about him. Ermenonville's his shadow ... I grew up in that shadow. You want to make life worthwhile for us ... he wanted to make life worthwhile for the world. He was a brave guy--a fighter. You know ... he said civilization is a disease. As the war hounds us, we see he was right. He was a man of reveries ... I've wanted to be a man of reveries."
It seemed to Orville that Rousseau's philosophy was symbolized by the white tomb on the island of poplars, by the swans on the Petit Lac. Men paid their respect by pausing there, confronting the empty tomb.